We use more than 100 000 chemicals in our daily lives to promote health, treat disease, facilitate transportation, use in industrial processes, grow food and access clean water. While these ...
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We use more than 100 000 chemicals in our daily lives to promote health, treat disease, facilitate transportation, use in industrial processes, grow food and access clean water. While these developments have improved human lives, many of these compounds ultimately end up in our seas and oceans where they represent a threat to marine life, ourselves and our continued use of the oceans to treat our waste, provide us with food and offer us recreation. Many of the pollution problems of previous decades seem to have been resolved, in the developed world, or at least managed to minimise their environmental impacts. However, despite treatments being available that reduce their damaging qualities, a potent mixture of toxic compounds enter the marine environment every day along with other potentially harmful additions including heat, noise and light and non-native species. The question thus arises: is pollution a problem that has really been solved? How well are we managing traditional pollutants? What are the challenges we still face today? What are the upcoming marine pollution challenges that face society? This volume describes the different marine pollutants, the science behind measuring their ecological impacts and how they are monitored in the environment, including traditional and new management approaches. This is an up-to-date account of marine pollution within the broad ecological and social context of a growing, technologically advanced, global population.Less

Marine Pollution

Christopher L. J. FridBryony A. Caswell

Published in print: 2017-08-31

We use more than 100 000 chemicals in our daily lives to promote health, treat disease, facilitate transportation, use in industrial processes, grow food and access clean water. While these developments have improved human lives, many of these compounds ultimately end up in our seas and oceans where they represent a threat to marine life, ourselves and our continued use of the oceans to treat our waste, provide us with food and offer us recreation. Many of the pollution problems of previous decades seem to have been resolved, in the developed world, or at least managed to minimise their environmental impacts. However, despite treatments being available that reduce their damaging qualities, a potent mixture of toxic compounds enter the marine environment every day along with other potentially harmful additions including heat, noise and light and non-native species. The question thus arises: is pollution a problem that has really been solved? How well are we managing traditional pollutants? What are the challenges we still face today? What are the upcoming marine pollution challenges that face society? This volume describes the different marine pollutants, the science behind measuring their ecological impacts and how they are monitored in the environment, including traditional and new management approaches. This is an up-to-date account of marine pollution within the broad ecological and social context of a growing, technologically advanced, global population.

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